


In the Darkness With the Dead

by LostSnowdrift



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, TABSVerse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 06:03:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21192776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostSnowdrift/pseuds/LostSnowdrift
Summary: A story about the living dead, and the barriers around them.Part of theTABSVerse.





	In the Darkness With the Dead

_“Once, on the road, Prim met a meditating sage who had spent most of his life on top of a flat rock. They had black bread and shared some ajash, as was custom. The sage was thankful, as the road was not very frequently traveled in those days and he was very near the point of starvation. During his conversation, he was delighted to learn of Prim’s extensive mastery of Empty Palms and the fifty five earthly purities. Delighted, and as payment for his meal, he taught Prim the meaning of watchfulness._

_This was the old breathing and cold-atum technique often used by warrior monks in those days. It ran through the following methodology:_

_Build a tower, and make it impregnable. Make every stone so tightly sealed that no insect can squeeze through, no grain of sand can make it inside. Your tower must have no windows or doors. It must not accept passage by friend or foe. No weapon, no act of violence, and not one mote of love may penetrate its stony interior._

_“Why build the tower this way?” said Prim?_

_“It will make you invincible,” said the sage, “This is the way of Ya-at slave monks. Their skin is like iron, and so are their hearts. They are inured to death and fear. Grief shall never find them, and neither shall weakness.”_

### The First Day

“Don’t turn your back on the bodies.”

This was the first, last, and only advice that the mercenaries were given. It was the only advice they needed. By conventional measures they were capable fighters; they had fought from the sun-lit fields to the darkened sewers, emerged victorious in fetid mires and roaring factories, and slaughtered foes across the world. By conventional measures they were more than capable. But this was an unconventional job, in an unconventional place.

The “Deadlight Catacombs”, they called it. As if sticking the word “light” in the name would make it more appealing. This would have been a mausoleum, a shrine to the dead, a place of warm tenderness and remembrance. But the builders fell ill, and never recovered. The dusty flagstones and crumbling walls were all that remained of the architect’s original vision. The project was cancelled; the idea was buried, and the ruins themselves were buried too, under layers of snow and ice. It was never completed in his lifetime, and now it seemed it would never be complete at all.

The mercenaries weren’t much for superstition, but they acknowledged that the place was cursed. Dark magic rose with the sweeping archways, clouded the pale moonlight above, and soaked into the soil underneath. Superstition, rumors, fortune, that was all fake. But magic was very real, and very deadly. And the creatures that inhabited this place, scarred and warped by the same magic, were deadly too. They were a part of this haunted place, as much as the bricks and stones and catacombs below.

And something about the place refused to die – by all means it should have crumbled away long ago – yet, denied a vision of gentle death, it became a place of tortured life, wanting to rest but unable to die. The creatures that roamed those lonely halls were no exception.

Magic was deadly. But so were they. They descended into the darkness, until the gleam of their armor was no longer visible.

“Don’t turn your back on the bodies.”

It was the last thing that the young priestess heard before the high priest bid her farewell. She had been trained in the clerical arts since birth, and the holy words were inscribed in her skin, her memories, her heritage. She clutched her silver symbol, running her claws over its polished surface; it was cold here, and she tried to recall the warm days of reading scripture, while the sun glowed outside and dust floated gently through the afternoon air. It brought her some comfort, but not enough.

Her mission was to purify this haunted place, and send the spirits to a peaceful rest. It seemed impossible, almost daunting. But she believed in the Warden and his watchful presence, that he could guide her to safety. What she understood about the Warden, and what few non-clergy understood, was that the Warden was no mere jailor. He was the god of all barriers, not just prison walls. And just as walls held back the darkness, they kept things safe – and that was really what it was about. It was not about containment, or about isolation; it was about safety. And even though the Warden was gone, all the gods were; and they were not _dead_, only gone, watching over dragonkind from some place they could not follow. They were only gone, but they were still watching.

And she said this to herself as she paced over the dusty stones. She remembered her teachings, and it brought her some comfort. To find light was as simple as keeping the darkness out.

“Hey there.”

From the gloom, two figures emerged.

“Ah, you must be my escorts,” the priestess said. “I believe that was the arrangement?”

One of them, a Spinescale clad in darksteel plate, spoke first. “We’re supposed to sweep the place, from ground floor to the basement, and clear out any enemies. Deluge mentioned something about an escort job. I guess that’s you.”

The other mercenary, an Ophid covered in tattooed runes, sized up the priestess. She didn’t look like much. “What’s a girl like you doin’ in a place like this anyway?” they asked.

“I am supposed to descend to the depths of this place, and ring a bell in the basement. It will soothe the spirits and lay them to rest, and guide them to the great heavens beyond.”

The Ophid shrugged. “If ya say so.”

The Spinescale read over their contract again. “Vajra, it doesn’t say how to present evidence to Lord Deluge. It only says she’ll know when the contract’s fulfilled. There’s nothing in here about bringing back trophies. Maybe she pays us each time the bell’s rung.”

The Ophid named Vajra shrugged, twisting themself into a lazy coil. “Hey, works for me. Just as long as we get paid.”

“Shall we get going?”

“Lead the way.”

And the three went into darkness.

***

It was quiet for a long time. Sure, there was the clanking of armor and the click-clack of footsteps, but all else was still. No sound of wind, no sound of creatures calling; even their own sounds were muffled. They said little, staying silent except to navigate.

And it was dark for a long time too. The only light they had was the thin, pale light of a torch; their polished silver did not gleam because there was nothing to reflect. They could barely see each other through, only seeing dark outlines shift in the gloom.

“Hang on. I see something up ahead.”

They had been wandering through the cold and dark for a while when they saw the light. It was a single pale green flame, shrouded in complete darkness. The flame gave off no glow, and merely seemed to sit there, somehow piercing the dark without revealing what hid in it.

“What is that?” Vajra asked.

The flame drew closer, and more appeared behind it.

“Should we run away?” The priestess asked, anxiety rising in her voice.

“No. It’s our job to clear them out, remember?”

The flames drew closer. And as the flames crossed into the torchlight, the mercenaries saw that those flames sat in the eye-sockets of animal skulls, their rotten corpses jerking forward like marionettes.

And the eerie quiet was broken as _things _began emerging from the walls. Clouds of bones suspended in a choking blue fog rose from the flame; vultures made of obsidian and glass filled the sky and swooped down to peck at the bones. The sound of howling filled the hallways beyond, as reanimated beasts woken by the noise went on the prowl. All were filled with bloodlust and rage, and ready to hunt down those who disturbed them.

The mercenaries fell back on their standard routine – ambush, swipe, scratch, kill; ambush, swipe, scratch, dodge, kill; ambush, scratch, dodge, kill … They had little need for subtlety or grace, for they knew the Unbeatable Move, and all their battle was merely setting up the killing blow. _Ambush _– the mercenaries charged forward before their enemies could even react – _Swipe _– Vajra’s blade danced as they whirled around the battlefield, a frantic dervish of claws and steel and blood – _Dodge _– the Spinescale ducked as a bolt of spectral fire went over her head, shattering the column behind her – _Kill _– Vajra sunk her blade into a shambling corpse, driving deep into its rotting flesh, piercing it straight through – _Dodge _– and they used the momentum to launch themselves forward, away from a spear of bone – _Kill _– and the Spinescale swung her war hammer down, crushing a skull into powder. They were well used to the routine by this point, and went through the motions lazily.

But as the priestess looked around, adrenaline pumping through her veins, hyper-aware of the rocks digging into her and the echoing wails of hell-beasts and the sound of claws tearing through flesh and the smell of decay—she realized how vast this place was, and how it seemed to have no end, just more and more ruined chambers—and how small she was, in a place where everything was trying to hurt her. She was aware of everything that was happening to her, but she couldn’t process any of it. And she screwed her eyes shut and tried not to cry, and failed. She wasn’t built for this.

And the wailing tapered away, and it was just the three of them again, and a pile of ruined bodies. It was a mess in many ways: the blood spatters and craters in the pavement, the smell of putrefying flesh, the air full of heat and grime and ghostly flame.

The mercenaries had paid good money to learn the Unbeatable Move. And as they surveyed their work, they thought: their training had repaid them yet again.

The priestess cowered on the floor, whimpering. Crying hurt, but everything else did too, and she couldn’t force herself to do anything else.

“Poor thing,” Vajra mumbled. “She isn’t suited for this line of work. But that’s what we’re here for,” they added, “cause most folks aren’t.”

The Ophid fluttered over to the priestess, and extended a hand. “You all right?”

The priestess sniffled, and choked back a sob.

“It was horrible, I know,” Vajra said. “But that’s what you’re here for, right? To make it stop. We’re countin’ on you.” But the priestess still did not stand.

Vajra turned the priestess as best as she could, exposing long gashes down her scales. She could see fragments of bone and torn tendons, and the shredded tatters of her once-shining wings. The priestess would survive, but would never fly again.

“She’s really hurt. We can keep her stable, but we can’t treat her properly here. Should we turn back?”

“If we turn back and leave the monsters there, we don’t get paid. Sorry, but we have to keep moving.”

So they carried her further into the darkness, leaving the bodies behind.

“No, wait.”

“What?”

“Don’t turn your back—”

They turned to look, and the bodies were gone.

That wasn’t the first time Vajra let her greed overpower her decency, and it wouldn’t be her last.

They reached the lowest floor. There, in the center of the room, was the bell. A massive husk of metal tinged green with rust, runes carved around its base, hanging from an old wooden beam. In front of the bell was a mallet, just left on the ground.

“Well, here’s your cue.”

The priestess stepped forward. She held her holy symbol aloft and began to say a prayer, and the sound of her voice filled the room. The words echoed off the walls, and though Vajra couldn’t tell what they meant, they sounded beautiful anyways. A soft light appeared and began to shine, and the room was awash with light and song. The light rose and the song swelled to a crescendo, and the priestess stepped forward and struck the bell; and the sound vibrated deep within their bodies, and it was out of audible range but they _felt _the sound buzz within them.

And then the light died away and it was over in an instant.

“I guess that’s it. We’ll head back up now.”

“I have faith in the Warden. I believe we have done good work here, and that he will take care of the rest.”

Vajra stared at the priestess. Her voice was confident, but her body language betrayed her uncertainty, still shaken by the violence she’d seen. “For your sake, kid… I hope so.”

They made the rest of the journey in silence. Previously, the priestess considered the silence of the crypt awful and stifling. Now she considered it a blessing.

At the ground floor they found Deluge waiting for them. “Thank you,” she said. “Mercenaries, go rest. I will take things from here.” She motioned for the priestess to follow her. “I felt the bell ring. You did well. Come with me, and I will return you to your home.”

As they left the priestess behind, Vajra had a sudden thought: they never learned the priestess’s name.

The priestess walked alongside her Lord Deluge. She wasn’t used to being in the presence of royalty, let alone the Lord of Ice Flight. She should’ve been happier, but considering the day’s events she was just … tired, so very tired. She wanted to go home to her convent and nap in the fading sun, and lose herself in obscure passages of the Warden’s scripture; she wanted to forget, in any way possible. She wanted to rest, and talk with Deluge a different day.

If Deluge had noticed this, she didn’t care.

“Tell me what you saw down there,” she said.

And they talked, as they receded further into the darkness, until their voices faded into the quiet gloom.

### Three Months Later

The mercenaries would be paid in full when the monsters were eliminated. One month later, they were still at work. They had not been paid in full. But they were paid well enough to stay, and it was a steady stream of work. It seemed as though the job would never end, which was a blessing of its own.

Day after day they would cull the undead; night after night they would reappear. They kept that lone piece of advice in their minds, “don’t turn your back on the bodies”, and took it to heart. They burned the bodies, watched the amber flames roar and slowly die out, scattered the ashes over the wind, separated the bones and buried them deep in the ground. Still, the hordes of undead would reappear the next day. Where did they all come from? Where did they go when the mercenaries slew them? _How long did they have to watch the bodies_?

Day after day they would clear the way for a priest or priestess; day after day they heard the deep bell toll. A continuous stream of religious officials flowed in and out of the catacombs. It was never the same one twice, which they found odd. Maybe the person performing the ritual wasn’t right, somehow, and that’s why it failed, and it would keep failing until they found the right one. But in truth, neither of them had any idea why they kept coming back. They just _did_.

And as long as they did, they’d keep doing their dirty work.

But the Spinescale had a dirty little secret: she hoped they would _never _find the right person. If they did, the job was over, and they’d have to find something else to do. Not that she was _deliberately _sabotaging anything (nor did she have any idea what to sabotage), but this was a steady gig, and it paid well. Better make it last as long as possible, right? They were paid to kill and kill _efficiently_, not to ask questions.

If the priests were injured by battle? Wasn’t her problem. And if their priests failed the ritual? All the better.

And so they lived like that for a long time: in the mass graves with the dead. They lived in a place only the dead could call home. They lived in the crypts and mausoleums, built and forgotten by their progeny, defiled by time and blood. Their home crumbled around them and they did not care.

They lived in the mass graves with the dead, sending the undead to their temporary rest, and disturbing phantoms from their place. They whirled through the battlefield with a brutal swiftness, borne not of fury nor desperation nor savage pleasure, but from a cold and terrible machine, and a grim sense of purpose and resolve. It was their job; they had to do it. They were well-oiled automata made of scales and bone; and they were constantly in motion, toiling away. They ate little and did not sleep. In the pale sunrise they set out, and in the evening they made camp, and the next morning they set out again.

They were machines, and they were always moving. They never stopped to think about what they were doing. They rarely stopped in general. They descended far below the surface, travelling further and further away from civilization. And their own life faded away, lost to the mechanical toil of battle, _ambush-scratch-kill_. Whatever light flickered in their eyes was far, far away, buried under armor plates and graveyard soil. Whatever thoughts they had were tossed aside by their constant motion, unable to congeal into larger ideas.

The best they could do was make a game of it: who killed the most that day; who brought home the most trophies. They stopped playing games when they lost count.

They didn’t have much time to think about their jobs—time to think about the souls they crushed under their claws, or the dead whose rest they disturbed. They were not paid to think; machines were not made to think. And when they had the time, they chose not to think about their lives; they had more work to do, and needed the rest, and time to prepare for the next battles. So they chose not to think. And their spirits flickered away under the darkness, almost gone. They lived with the dead and did their jobs and did not think, and one could barely tell them apart from the dead.

Vajra wondered what happened to the priests and priestesses, and the rituals in general. She didn’t have much time to think about it, and many days she chose to push that thought to the back of her mind. Just focus on the work, she said; the rest of it doesn’t matter. She didn’t know anything about magic or rituals or scripture; she hoped the people above her were making the right choices. And besides that, preventing the dead from escaping their prison was an important job. It was meaningful work, maybe. But the days themselves lacked meaning.

_What happened to the bodies_, Vajra thought. _And what happened to the priestess?_

And that old advice: don’t turn your back on the bodies.

Don’t turn your back …

The mercenaries decided to follow that advice. The daily grind could wait.

### Three Months and a Day

Vajra and the Spinescale walked deeper into the catacombs, watching Deluge take the priests away. Quite a few, this time, some in better shape than others. The mercenaries crept along the passageways, into a part of the ruins they’d never seen before. It looked much the same as the rest of the ruins, but they had seen every other chamber and corridor on their many, many trips to the basement. They thought they had seen everything.

They had a mental map of the catacombs, and noticed that Deluge was veering far away from the entrance, going in almost the opposite direction. They noticed the machinery and wires creeping along the walls, growing in density. And they noticed the silence, or the lack of it; something big was in the distance, something _loud_. How had they not heard it before? Or had they just gotten used to it in those three months?

They watched, from a distance, as Deluge spoke to the group. They couldn’t hear what she was saying. But they saw a flash of silver as one of the priests fell to the ground, and they saw Deluge throw the body aside, and saw the hordes of undead feast on the still-warm flesh.

***

Something about the place refused to die, which made it perfect for Deluge’s work. She withdrew the dagger, and watched an inky black smoke rise from the wound and curl around the blade.

_The spirit. _And this one seemed strong.

She took the blade and the smoke to a separate room. Inside the chamber was a massive being made from dark energy, made of dozens of souls struggling against their chains. Holes in its hide revealed black smoke roiling within, along with sparks of dark purple light. The souls pulled against their bindings, and the beast bulged as though it would burst at the seams, but Deluge would figure out how to make them cooperate.

It was incomplete, but growing closer by the day. And it was made in the shape of a dragon god.

“Soon, my Warden,” Deluge whispered. “Soon you shall be made whole again.” She would reunify these disparate parts, and return them to their origin.

Deluge threw the priestess’s symbol onto the pile, where it looked like a discarded bit of scrap metal, instead of the personal artifact it really was.

The priestess had a name. All of them did. But Deluge only recorded them in a little ledger she carried, tracking them by volume instead of by name. She crossed their names off the list, and promptly forgot them. She would notify the families later with a form letter, and that would be the end of it.

***

A little further away, the mercenaries discussed what to do next.

“We collect our pay, and we leave this place,” the Spinescale suggested. “Clean exit. We move on.”

“How can we move on from _that_?” Vajra hissed. “We have to tell someone!”

“Tell who? Mercenary work is still legally gray, and in any case Deluge controls the state.”

“But we have to do something about it!”

“What gives us the right? Vajra, we’re just as responsible for this as Deluge is. We led them to their doom. We have been poisoned by violence, and we can’t do anything else. We’re just machines made to kill.”

The Spinescale sighed. “The way I see it, I can’t escape from my fate. This is what I’ve always done, and I don’t know how to do anything else.”

This was true. So many years of bloody work had left them ill-equipped to return to society. They had always lived on the fringes, bouncing from contract to contract; no one else would have them. No one wanted the melancholy Spinescale who said nothing; no one wanted the anxious Ophid who only knew how to fight. No one wanted the shell-shocked warriors who were always waiting for the next attack, always on guard and paranoid and hiding behind their mental barriers. No one wanted them.

And Vajra knew it was true. The true cost of learning the Unbeatable Move was forgetting everything else.

But Vajra knew there was a way out. “My claws will never leave my sword, and my mind will never leave the battlefield. The normal world is walled off to me. I am only a tool for cutting. Violence has so thoroughly poisoned my body that I am incapable of doing anything else.

“But if I am only a tool for violence, then at the very least, I hope I can be used for something good.”

Vajra strapped their sword to their side, ready to depart. “And besides that, I would rather die than live in hell.”

She charged into the ritual chamber, eyes locked on Deluge.

_Ambush—scratch—dodge—kill—_

Vajra got the jump on Deluge and wrapped around her neck, digging in with her rear claws. She sliced at Deluge’s throat, but Deluge flew and threw off Vajra’s aim. Deluge clutched at her throat and pried Vajra off, the Ophid’s claws digging long cuts as they pulled through her flesh. She slammed Vajra into the ground, and Vajra felt her bones crunch against the pavement. She saw the dagger and rolled away, feeling it graze her scales.

_—scratch—dodge—kill—_

They were both covered in cuts and bruises, droplets of blood falling to the dirt below. Vajra just needed to bide her time, and build up energy for the Unbeatable Move. Just needed to get away—Deluge swiped at her but she tumbled into the air, narrowly avoiding it—she spun around Deluge, diving in to nick at her hide, and darting aside. It wasn’t time yet, she just needed to wait—

Deluge came after her, fury burning in her eyes, hatred in her roaring voice; her flurry of daggers and claws grazed Vajra’s scales. Vajra dove between her limbs and at her chest; Deluge deflected the blade, Vajra redirected the momentum to knock the hilt into her lungs. But she’d gotten too close. And Deluge grabbed the Ophid by the throat and started to choke her, watching her thrash around.

_—kill—_

“Deluge.” Vajra wheezed, in between short gasps of air.

“What?”

“Don’t turn your back on the bodies.”

Deluge turned to look. Beneath her, the remaining priests and priestesses surrounded the broken god. They pulled on its chains with all their might, and—_snap_—with a resounding boom the chains broke. The incomplete creature shuddered for a moment and looked at itself, then at Deluge, then back at itself.

The incomplete god shed its chains, and flew towards them with an unnatural grace. The voices of the dead surrounded the two, and the world went black.

### Epilogue: Ten Years Later

Ten years later, when the Catacombs were destroyed and the entire world with it, the whole operation didn’t matter much. The money didn’t matter much either.

The few survivors lived on as ghosts, watching the old world fade away, and themselves with it. For one brief moment, they were the undead. Caught in this thin moment between the buried past and the uncertain future, they too were in an uncertain state, neither dead nor alive.

Vajra survived. Her Spinescale companion was assumed to be lost. Deluge, their contractor, had survived too. And so the two hovered next to each other, a blank white wasteland in front of them, staring at the ash dunes.

In those days, Vajra had nothing to do except think. So she thought, and she remembered questions from ten years ago. That time when she briefly worked for Deluge, before, well …

Deluge could do nothing to her, so she could safely ask her questions.

“Why?” Vajra asked. “Why make them go through that big ritual? Why hurt them like that? I’m not asking about the cruelty, because I know you don’t give a shit about that. I’m asking what the point of that was, if you were just going to kill them anyways.”

Deluge sighed. She didn’t answer for a long, long time. But she did answer.

“I needed strong souls. And when I was younger … I thought suffering made the soul stronger. You always hear that from suffering comes strength, or that nothing can be gained for free. I believe you are shaped by your experiences. And no experience is more life-changing, more defining, than that of a traumatic moment. Who you are in the worst of times shapes who you are all the time; it permanently changes who you are, even in your quiet moments. You will always carry that pain with you, coiled inside you like a spring. And that pain will teach you how to defend yourself, and you’ll know how to fight that pain in the future, and build a wall to isolate yourself from it. That’s what I believed. That’s what the Warden’s scripture describes: keeping yourself safe, behind walls, where they cannot hurt you. I still believe that to some extent.

“And so I wanted them to suffer. Every part of that hellhole was set up to make them suffer, so they’d be stronger. It was a machine designed to maximize suffering.

“Looking back,” Deluge said, “I know I can never atone for what I did. And I don’t know if I believe that anymore. But I’ve suffered a lot, and I survived the calamity. On the other hand, if what I said was true, they should have been strong enough to survive the calamity, to hang onto life as we have, and I have not seen any of them.”

“Did the bell do anything? Did the ritual have any effects?”

“No.”

“I thought so.”

Vajra sat in silence for a while, thinking. “About suffering,” she said. “You forgot one thing.”

“What would that be?”

“The walls must come down eventually.”

Deluge said nothing, and let her continue.

“Actual strength doesn’t come from suffering itself. It’s about healing and growing stronger, about learning to cope with a dark and shitty world, not throwing yourself to its mercy. Actual strength doesn’t come from being knocked down; it comes from standing back up again, or else learning how to crawl. Because, yeah, sometimes you can’t stand up again and you’ll never be the same, but you can still move forward differently.

“And you can stay in those walls and shut yourself from the world, and no one will look at your wounds and reopen them, but no one can bandage them either. And you can sit inside those walls and never change again, but when the walls come down you won’t know what to do; or you can take down those walls and carry them with you, inside your heart, and know that you can put them up if you need to, but that you _don’t _need to, most of the time. And you don’t need to wear your armor all the time, and a dark and shitty world is still full of bright people that you should let into your life, and you can take the walls down and let the light in.

“So I think you’re wrong. Suffering is just shitty. But how you respond to it, and how people help you get through it, is where strength comes from.”

And there was nothing more they could say. The machines lay still, the catacombs were gone, and the undead were quiet, and eventually they faded into history like everything else did.

_Build a tower, and make it impregnable. Make every stone so tightly sealed that no insect can squeeze through, no grain of sand can make it inside. Your tower must have no windows or doors. It must not accept passage by friend or foe. No weapon, no act of violence, and not one mote of love may penetrate its stony interior._

_Prim thought a moment, and came upon a realization, for she was wise, obedient, and an excellent daughter. “If a man built a tower this way, he would quickly starve, no matter how strong he became.”_

_The sage was even more delighted. “Yes,” he said, “There is a better way, and I will teach it to you:_

_Once you have built your tower, you must deconstruct it, brick by brick, stone by stone. You must do it meticulously and carefully and memorize every stone, so that while you leave no physical trace of it remaining, your tower is still built in your mind and your heart, ready to spring anew at a moment’s notice._

_You can enjoy the fresh air, and eat fine meals, and enjoy a good drink with your friends, but all the while your tower remains standing. You are both prisoner and warden. This is the hardest way, but the strongest.”_

_Prim saw the wisdom in this, and quickly made to return to the road, but the sage stopped her before she left._

_“As you to your earlier remark,” the sage said, “The man who builds his tower but cannot take it apart again – that man is at the pinnacle of his strength. But that man will surely perish.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another story about the exalt-grinding mechanic interpreted hyper-literally. It is about a machine built on suffering, more specifically, focusing on the infrastructure necessary to support such a thing, and the people who are part of the exalting machine. I’m sure this has been done before, but whatever, I’ll do it again.
> 
> With credits to KSBD for the intro/final text. https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/seeker-of-thrones-9-109/


End file.
